WHAT IS YOUR CHOICE?
Deuteronomy 30:15-20 - February 15, 2004
DEUTERONOMY 30:15-20
15See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. 16For I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.
17But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, 18I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.
19This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live 20and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Dearest Fellow-Redeemed and Saints in the Lord:
What is your choice? In our lives we make many choices. After we make our choices and we look back, we realize some of them are good and some not so good. After we have made our choices and look back, we realize that some have taken much thought into and some not so much thought. Today, as we listen to the words of our text, Moses gives his people a choice, a choice to choose good and live long and enjoy God’s blessings or a choice to be disobedient and then suffer the results.
First and foremost we want to remember that the most important choice has been made for us. The same divine choice was also made for the children of Israel. God had chosen the children of Israel to inherit the Promised Land. They were known as His chosen people. Today, you and I also have been chosen to inherit the Promised Land that is yet to come. We have been chosen and called out of darkness that we might live in the light of the knowledge of salvation. We have been called out of darkness to live with God in heaven forever some day. So that divine choice is already made for us.
But what do we do after God has called us out of darkness? That is what our text talks about today. In the Gospel of John we are told how God has chosen us. We have not decided on our own to believe; but His choice has been upon us. From John 15 we read: "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit--fruit that will last" (JOHN 15:16a). That is what Moses is talking about today in our text. What is your choice? Is it going to be good fruit or bad fruit? He says the Lord has chosen us to bear good fruit that will last. So in our lifetime of choices Moses reminds us to daily ask ourselves
WHAT IS YOUR CHOICE?
I. Is it disobedience and then God’s curses?
II. Or will it be obedience and God’s blessings?
I. Disobedience and God’s curse
The setting of our text takes place as the children of Israel are standing on the threshold of entering into the Promised Land. They had wandered in the wilderness for forty years, and their wandering is now coming to an end. But before they step across the Jordan River to enter into the Promised Land, God through Moses has some final words for His people. God wants to remind them that things are going to change for them. They are not going to be wandering around in the wilderness. They are going to find themselves in one place--in the Promised Land. They are not going to have to go out and collect manna every day, but instead they are going to be in a land flowing with milk and honey. The concern of Moses, of course, was when they come into this land of prosperity they might forget the Lord God. So he emphasizes that point. He says: 15See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. These seem to be easy choices, don’t they, life and prosperity or death and destruction?
Now as the people came into that Promised Land, we find the warning that Moses gives to them. Even though it seems to be an easy choice, they need to know the consequences of their bad choices. God said, 17but if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, 18I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. What was the requirement for the children of Israel when they entered the Promised Land? They had one thing to do, and that one thing was to drive out all of the inhabitants that were there. The Lord wanted them to drive out the inhabitants in the Promised Land, because they were pagan people. They did not believe in God, and they were not going to worship the Lord God Almighty. When the children of Israel went into the Promised Land, they drove out most of the people but not all of them. So it happened that because some of those people lived among God’s chosen people, the chosen people of God began to worship false gods. The list of false gods was long, and they were terrible. There was Baal, Asherah and Ashtoreth, and Molech who even demanded human sacrifices. Their hearts were drawn away from the Lord.
Rather than obedience God’s chosen people chose disobedience. What was going to happen? Moses says: You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. So it was that the children of Israel, even though here was to be their Promised Land for generation after generation, they soon found out as they disobeyed their enemies came and defeated them. The enemies came and took them away as prisoners. The enemies came and destroyed the city of Jerusalem more than one time. Rather than choosing life of prosperity, they chose disobedience and death and destruction.
It was a serious matter. The Lord said: 19This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. So they chose death and curses. The Lord said, "By everything which I have created, I am making this covenant with you. I have chosen you to be my people. Now what is your choice?"
Today, as we live already in our promised land, the Lord wants us to ask ourselves: What is our choice? As we live in this Promised Land, we also live among those who worship pagan things. There are many false gods around us. It is not that today’s idols are set up as false gods; but that people, events, activities are worshipped as idols. The Lord reminds us that day after day, we as believers and God’s chosen people make our choices. Our choices are not any easier than they were at the beginning of time. In fact today’s choices are much harder. Remember Adam and Eve only had one choice--not to eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Only one choice to do wrong! They chose sin in a perfect world. We are far removed from a perfect world that Adam and Eve enjoyed. Today you and I have many different choices that the world puts before us. The clear, Scriptural evidence that the world makes bad choices and wrong choices is that the world still faces death. Even though the world might try to deny sin, it is there. Listen to the words of the Prophet Ezekiel: "For every living soul belongs to me, the father as well as the son--both alike belong to me. The soul who sins is the one who will die"(EZEKIEL 18:4). None can escape death because no one in this lifetime escapes sin.
But what is the prevailing attitude? The prevailing attitude in the world around us is that if we let people do what they want and respect their space and their feelings and their opinions and even their bad judgments, that is not such a bad thing. So it is that the debate in our society goes on--whether people need to even get married, whether people who are not of the opposite sex need a marriage license. The list of disobedient choices grows with each generation. All around us people declare it is not so bad. Evil is considered good and good evil. People consider themselves worthy of heaven. Yet, what does Scripture say? Just as the Lord is serious here with Moses and His chosen people, He is very serious in our day and age with our nation that lives in a very promised land. God says: "They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good"(TITUS 1:16). That describes how you and I and everyone are born into this world as detestable and disobedient and unfit for anything good.
Still, God has placed His choice upon us. God has taken us from the grasp of Satan and placed us into the palm of His hand so that we can make good choices. We can make Christian choices. It is difficult. It is hard. The world is quite alluring. The philosophy of the world creeps in, the Lord reminds us. Jesus told the parable of the seed and the sower. As we look at that parable, it seems very clear. But when Jesus was done telling that parable, the disciples asked what it meant. So Jesus had to explain it. He talks about that seed that fell among the weeds and the thorns. Jesus explains in Matthew: "The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful" (MATTHEW 13:22). Remember God’s choice? God’s choice was upon us that we would bear fruit. Sometimes in our life we make the wrong choices. We make choices that are concerned with the deceitfulness of wealth. We wonder and worry. Do we ever have enough to live on? How are we going to survive when prices keep going up? Do you think God is going to forget you? The worries of this life--we make choices concerning them instead of God’s kingdom first. Sometimes, that Word of God is choked out. The Biblical truth that God has chosen us to be His for time and eternity is forgotten.
Our Lord says to us, "What is your choice?” Is it going to be listening to the world and disobedience and seeing God’s judgment? Or is it going to be listening to God’s Word and obedience and enjoy God’s blessings?
II. Obedience and God’s blessings
Remember, Moses was trying to remind God’s people to be God’s people. From now on God’s people were not going to be collected as one group and wandering in the wilderness by themselves. As a group, they were going to be thrown into the midst of pagan people. The Lord didn’t want His people to have their heads turned by the false gods of the pagans. The Lord didn’t want their heads to be turned by the prosperity that they would enjoy. Both of these failings of God’s chosen people did occur. As Moses said, 15See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. How were they going to enjoy life and prosperity? Moses continues: 16For I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws. As Moses spoke to them, they knew the commands and the decrees and laws of God. God’s chosen people had been given the Ten Commandments written on stone, not just once, but twice. They had been also given other commands and decrees and laws. By their obedience to them, this Old Testament covenant of God’s laws, they would show their love for God.
God says to walk in His ways and to love Him. God was going to bless them: then you will live and increase, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. Make no mistake. God was not going to turn away from His people. His people might turn away from Him. God would bring them back through trials and tribulations. God would bring them back through captivity. It would have been much easier if they would just walk in God’s way.
Moses goes on to say, "Now choose life; choose life that you and your children may live." How strange it sounds that God through Moses has to tell His people to choose life. But they needed to hear it: For the LORD is your life. The children of Israel had seen the Lord as their life day in and day out as they wandered in the wilderness. There was the cloud of glory during the day that led them and the fiery cloud at night that also led them. The LORD led them 24 hours a day. The LORD is your life, Moses said, "The Lord who made all those promises." Moses writes: For the LORD is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The Lord God had promised this land to their forefathers, generations ago, and now that promise was going to be fulfilled. This next generation would enter into the Promised Land. Moses would not enter, because he had disobeyed and made a bad choice. Moses was only going to see the Promised Land, and then he would die because of his disobedience. Moses knew what the Lord meant. He said to them, "What is your choice today?" Choose life so that you may live.
In our day and age everything is a great blessing in our society. We have freedom of religion and freedom of speech. We can do and say just about anything we want to without any repercussions, because those are the freedoms that we enjoy. We have freedoms which nations around the world lust after and do not possess. Yet, how often do we take them for granted? How often do we forget the freedom we have to be able sit down and read our Bibles every day, the freedom to confess Christ openly without any government interference, the freedom to worship on Sunday? God has blessed us! In our Christian freedom the Lord reminds us to choose life. In Hebrews believers are encouraged: "Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful" (HEBREWS 10:23). God is faithful. Our faithful, gracious God has promised us life and every blessing—both earthly and eternal.
As we look at our life, we see our lives are continually filled with blessings beyond all comparison. These are divine blessings that you and I do not deserve, divine blessings that we have not earned, and divine blessings that we cannot buy. This is especially true when we look at the spiritual blessings that the Lord has given us. In Exodus the Lord tells us: "Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine"(EXODUS 19:5). If we had to think of one thing this week, we could just contemplate that thought. When we look at all of the creation in the world and all the billions of people that are here, the Lord says, "You are my possession." Every believer, every Christian no matter who they are or where they live, is a chosen part God’s treasured possession. When we compare ourselves to all of God’s creation, we are like a speck in the whole picture of the world, just a speck in this universe. Yet, the Lord knows us by name. God has chosen us, so that we might choose obedience and enjoy God’s blessings.
You know how it goes. It is a constant struggle--our new Christian nature that wants to do what God wants us to do battles against our sinful nature that wants us to do what God doesn’t us to do. So it happens, sometimes our sinful nature agrees with the world. The world says that all those commandments are so old and dusty, the Bible is so ancient, and who can or still wants to live by it? Who can live and have fun by obeying God’s words? Who can follow God’s commandments? Yet, what does God say to us? Jesus reminds us that it is not the commandments of the Old Testament that we are concerned with, but it is the commandment of the New Testament--the law of Christian love. So our Lords says in the epistle of John: "This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith" (1 JOHN 5:3,4). God has given us faith to overcome the wickedness of the world. God has given us our faith to overcome the snares of Satan. God has given us our faith to overcome the failings of our flesh.
Our gracious God says to us that now that He has made us His believers and His children, His possessions, God says, "What is your choice?” Is it disobedience, listening to the world; or is it obedience and listening to God’s Word?" On our own we cannot do it. But because God has given us faith and He is alive and well in us, we can do all things. Paul writes in Philippians: "For it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose" (PHILIPPIANS 2:13). What is your choice? Stand fast against disobedience. God has given each of us the strength and ability to continue to follow Him, because He has chosen us first. May each of us enjoy all of God’s blessings! Amen.
Pastor Timm O. Meyer
